We’ve always been the kind of family that never thought twice about running out to the store to pick up whatever we needed. Part of our sustainability challenge is to rely more on what we have.

This morning, my husband mentioned that we were nearly out of dish soap, and asked me to pick some up when I was out. I started to add it to my mental shopping list, and then stopped. I looked around the kitchen, and realized that we had everything there to make our own dish soap.

Good. I’d been looking for a new project, and this was perfect. I ushered Hubby and the kids off to Grandma and Grandpa’s and prepared to get my craft on.

Coffee Vanilla Soap Bars

Making your own dish soap is super easy. So easy it’s almost embarrassing to go to the store and purchase it. All you need is a bar of soap (I used one from a batch I made a few weeks ago), water and lemon juice. That’s it.

Step 1: Grate about a cup of Soap

Gratey Gratey

Step 2: Place grated soap into a pot with about two-two and a half cups of warm water.

Bubble Bubble Toil and Trouble

Step 3: Keep it over medium-low heat until all the grated soap has melted. Don’t boil it, just keep it warm.

Citron

Step 4: Allow the mixture to cool, and add about a teaspoon of lemon juice. I actually didn’t measure, I just put a good glug in. It seemed to turn out all right.

Allow the mixture to cool completely, and then pour into any container you like. I recycled an old dish soap bottle. Don’t mind the hideous colour, I used coffee vanilla bean soap to start with. Pretty or not, it’ll clean the dishes just the same.

Bar to Bottle

So that’s what I did today. Well, that and make up about a gallon of all purpose bathroom cleaner, tub scrub, and then proceeded to scrub a tub and clean a bathroom. And laundry. What can I say? It’s Sunday. That’s what we do around here on Sundays.

Absolutely. Any soap bar would work. In fact, my local dollar store has some really nice (and cheap) olive oil soap bars that I might try next time. They would probably be really nice on the hands. Well, on my husbands hands, I don’t do dishes ;)

This is FANTASTIC!!!! I am going to do this over the weekend because we are running low on dish soap…(I am thinking this would be also good for making liquid hand soap, too) Thank you so much Lesley. With joy, Angi

Great idea! I’d definitely use an organic soap such as olive oil based otherwise commercial soaps are a mass of chemicals smeared on your crockery. There’s a what goes on your skin goes directly into your blood post on my blog called Skin Love.

I followed the recipe exactly, and it came out great!…at first. The next day, it was some kind of ultra-polymer, very thick and not squirt-able at all. It barely suds. I did use castile soap…could that be the problem?

It’s possible, I’ve never used the castile soap. Try reheating it so that it’s pour-able and then adding more water to thin it out. Home made soap doesn’t have anywhere near as many suds. Lather doesn’t mean clean though, it’s just what we’re used to with commercial soap. Good luck!

A quick Google of “crock pot lye soap” should give you all you need. I can’t remember which recipe I used, and I also followed a few different youtube videos on the process. There’s lots of great info out there. Good Luck!